Voters throng to hear the long-shot GOP contender preach Austrian economics and a return to the gold standard. Seriously

Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul during a campaign meeting in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, USA on October 13, 2007.

It sometimes seems as if someone is playing a cruel practical joke on Ron Paul. He goes to a college and delivers the same speech he's given for the past 30 years of his political career, the one espousing the Austrian school of economics. Only now the audience is packed with hundreds of kids in RON PAUL REVOLUTION T-shirts who go nuts  giving standing ovations when he drones on about getting rid of the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard. After a speech at Iowa State last month, when nearly half the crowd had to stand...